


Tiny Maestro

by Mertens



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux, Phantom of the Opera - Lloyd Webber
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/M, Non-human Erik, absurdity, magical au, not historically accurate, when I say alternate universe I really mean it, why not
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-17 20:22:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29971812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mertens/pseuds/Mertens
Summary: Raoul learns three things about his fiancée, Christine—she has been visited by an angel, the angel lives in her wig, and Christine doesn’t actually know how to recognize if something is an angel or not.
Relationships: Christine Daaé & Erik | Phantom of the Opera, Raoul de Chagny/Christine Daaé
Comments: 21
Kudos: 21





	1. Chapter 1

In the mythical land of Paris, France, one could ascertain the social rank of a young lady by the size of her wig. When the recently orphaned Christine Daaé, aged seventeen years old, first arrived in France at the invitation of the family of her childhood sweetheart, the Vicomte de Chagny, her wig was a pitiful thing that held far too much resemblance to natural hair. But by the time Christine was twenty years old—and Raoul de Chagny, her now fiancé, was returning from his five year expedition to disprove the existence of the “North Pole”—her wig was nearly two feet tall, powdered a stark white, and always elaborately decorated. 

No one could say for certain what, exactly, had caused the change in Mlle Daaé, though of course this did nothing to stop them from speculating. All anyone knew was that she had come to the Opera Populaire as timid little mouse, and she had somehow transformed into the loveliest of songbirds. When asked about this strange transformation, she would merely laugh and glance upwards, her peach painted lips curling into a sly, secretive smile, and say only that she had been visited by a “an angel”. She would say no more on the topic. 

In truth, Christine Daaé had been visited by _something_. 

She had been at the Opera Populaire for nearly half a year when it had happened. She had been in her dressing room, crying, as was often the case on afternoons when rehearsals for shows were finished. She’d never felt so alone in the world—her papa was gone, and though Raoul had offered to marry her, he wouldn’t be back for several years yet. His family was kind enough, but rather distant, and she knew she wasn’t their first choice for their youngest son. 

It was in the midst of those tragic tears that she first heard the beautiful voice that enchanted her. She could see no source for it, but all the same it comforted and cheered her. She was in awe of it, and stopped crying. Though it disappeared, it came back the next day, and the next, and finally Christine tried to talk to whoever the voice belonged to. 

The voice said that it belonged to an angel—the Angel of Music. Christine and the apparent angel talked to each other, and the angel promised to give her singing lessons if it would keep her from ever crying again. 

It was in this manner that Christine improved her voice immensely. Three months passed, and she confessed that she wished she could see the angel, and the angel obliged. 

Christine adored her angel. She’d never seen one before, though she’d heard many stories about people who had. Erik—the name of her angel—wasn’t quite what she thought an angel would be, but that mattered little to her. Erik was kind to her, and she was kind to Erik, and that was all that mattered. 

Christine was nearly beside herself with joy when she finally went to the train station to see Raoul for the first time since she’d been in France. She smiled and shaded her eyes from the brightness of the twin suns as she scanned the platforms for her love. People were hustling and bustling about everywhere, rushing for trains, searching for taxis, trying to purchase tickets. The mix of voices and train whistles and the rustle of horses’s wings and their heavy hooves on the cobblestone all formed a sort of song, and she found herself beginning to hum. 

A man’s voice joined her in the same tune, humming along to whatever she made up. 

She dropped her hand from above her eyes and beamed, glancing upwards. 

Soon enough she caught sight of Raoul and ran to meet him, careful not to upset her wig. 

“Raoul, Raoul!”

“Little Lotte!”

They embraced and laughed and then hailed a taxi pulled by one of the flying horses, catching up on the ride back to the city. 

Raoul was wildly happy to see her, and anxious to hear everything that had happened in her life. The only thing that bothered him was every so often he heard some sort of odd noise, almost like someone was disapproving of something. He brushed it off as the driver, perhaps. 

“You look like you’ve done so well for yourself,” Raoul said, eyeing her huge wig. 

It was decorated with little flowers here and there, and a tiny parasol at the top. Somewhere between the top and middle was a face staring down at him, porcelain, with hollow eye sockets and a stern expression. It made him feel a little weird, but he never really did understand fashion, and if his Christine thought it was becoming, then it was the best damn wig he’d ever seen, creepy face and all. 

Christine merely giggled. 

“Oh Raoul, you don’t know the half of it!”

They arrived at her apartment, where she promised to tell him more, away from the prying ears that might be listening in the taxi. 

“My brother says you’ve become quite a star at the opera,” he said as she locked her door behind them. 

“I have,” she answered solemnly. 

“You’ve made such a name for yourself, and so quickly!”

“Raoul,” she said seriously. “Do you know why?”

“No, why?”

“I have been visited by the Angel of Music.”

“Really?”

“Really,” she said and nodded. “He lives here with me, now. He’s always with me. Would you like to meet him?”

An angel! Raoul could barely believe it. He’d never seen one. To think, his Christine, with her own angel! Of course he wanted to meet him. 

“I would! Truly!” he said eagerly. 

Christine smiled lovingly at him and took him by the hand, leading him to her bedroom where she stood in front of her vanity. Once there, she reached up to carefully remove her wig—something she could do in front of Raoul because they were already engaged. She gently placed the wig on her vanity table, and all of a sudden the porcelain face began to move, as though there were something in her wig. 

Raoul’s brow furrowed. 

“This,” Christine told him, “is Erik.”


	2. Chapter 2

Raoul stared with growing horror as something the size of a little doll crawled out of her wig. What he had thought was a mere bauble pinned to her hair was in fact a mask on the face of a tiny creature that apparently had been holed away in her wig this entire time. 

She gently helped him out of the wig, setting him on the vanity with great reverence. He looked from Raoul to Christine and back again, those empty eyes hideous and haunting. 

Christine looked up at Raoul and smiled. 

“He already knows who you are,” she told Raoul. “I’ve told him all about you!”

Erik crossed his arms and made a noise at Raoul, who suddenly realized where all the disapproving noises in the taxi had come from. He tapped his little foot on the wooden vanity, and Raoul had never felt so judged in his entire life. 

Except—except—this wasn’t—

“Christine,” Raoul said carefully, his voice low and quiet. “I don’t think that’s an angel.”

Her pretty smile vanished, concern coming over her face. 

“Whatever do you mean?”

“That can’t be an angel... That looks just like the thing my brother had to chase out of the barn once... It kept eating chickens and scaring the cows. It certainly wasn’t an angel.”

Christine frowned, stooping down to be face level with Erik, who turned from Raoul and reached his hands out to Christine. She held her hand out, and he grabbed her finger, holding tight to it as he shot an oddly accusing yet blank stare at Raoul. 

“Oh Raoul,” she cried, “Why would the angel lie?”

“Because! Because it’s not an angel!” 

He ran his hands through his hair, exasperated that she couldn’t understand that. 

She shook her head in disbelief, and Erik mimicked the motion. 

“No, no—“

“He’s a goblin, or a gremlin, or _something_ , I don’t know, I’m not a scientist—“ Raoul babbled. “He’s—he came up from the sewer, probably—Christine, get rid of him!”

She gasped and stood quickly, throwing her hands up as a shield around Erik. 

“I’ll do no such thing!” she said, scandalized. “He taught me to sing like a bird! He’s been my friend for so long! I could _never_ —!”

Raoul placed his hands on his hips, staring at Erik. 

“He can talk?” he asked at last. 

“Well of course he can,” Christine said, giving Raoul an annoyed glance. “How else did he teach me?”

“Will he talk to me?”

Erik buried his face in her hand, refusing to look at Raoul. 

“He’s shy,” she said gently, giving him a sympathetic pat on the head, then turned to Raoul and snapped— “Don’t force him, Raoul!”

“Sorry, sorry, geeze.”

She picked him up with all the love in the world and placed Erik on the floor. Raoul was disturbed to see how quickly he could run, darting this way and that. Christine led Raoul out once more, this time to the kitchen. She set about making dinner for them, and Raoul cautiously began to help her by preparing the salad, trying to keep an eye out so that he didn’t accidentally step on Erik. Who knew if whatever he was had some kind of magic powers? Raoul did not want to take the chance. Erik, as it turned out, avoided the floor entirely, preferring to climb up a shelf where he could stare ominously at Raoul and make him uncomfortable. 

Once dinner was finished and Christine began to plate the food, it slowly dawned on Raoul what was happening. She’d taken three plates out of the cabinet, and he almost asked if someone was coming to have dinner with them. But when Christine stopped him from sitting next to her at the little table in her dining room, giving him an apologetic look, that was when he realized. 

“You can’t sit there,” she told him. “That’s where Erik sits.”

Raoul’s face fell. That thing was eating dinner with them? 

Erik clambered up the table leg and onto the table in a manner that made Raoul’s stomach turn. He settled himself on the tabletop, sitting cross legged. Christine placed his plate in front of him, smiling sweetly at him. She then placed a plate in front of Raoul. She smiled just as sweetly at him. 

“Pasketti,” Raoul said as he looked at the food Christine had given him. “It’s my favorite. You remembered.”

Christine blinked. 

“It’s Erik’s favorite, too!” she said. 

Raoul turned his gaze to Erik, who was staring straight at him. 

Raoul took a bite of his pasketti, still staring at Erik. Why, he could step on him and end this whole thing right now. 

Erik reached his tiny hands up to the porcelain mask and removed it. Raoul choked on his pasketti. Erik smirked at his reaction, his strange face twisting into a grin. Raoul coughed and sputtered at the sight before him. He’d suddenly lost most of his appetite. The porcelain mask was decidedly human-like—the face underneath... was not. 

Erik turned his odd, noseless face to Christine, a strange and eager emotion glowing in his bright yellow eyes. She beamed at his unmasked face as though he were all that was good in the world, and his smile lost its spiteful edge, becoming soft and genuine instead. He rolled up the sleeves of the little tuxedo suit he wore and began to eat the pasketti with his hands. 

Raoul tried to look anywhere but at him as the sauce smeared across his face and stained his hands, but he found his gaze pulled back to the revolting scene over and over again. The worst was when Erik was _looking_ at him, sharp teeth going to town on the food, red sauce dripping from his mouth, his eyes wide and yellow and unblinking. 

Unfortunately for Raoul, it did not get better from there. Christine swore up and down that Erik could speak and sing beautifully, but he never did when Raoul was around. She insisted, also, on taking him with her everywhere she went, letting him ride around in her wig. His only consolation was that Erik’s apparent shyness extended to everyone, and he always wore his mask while outside. Sometimes Raoul could almost forget his existence, absorbed in whatever activity with Christine—the ice cream parlor, the bubble emporium, the roller rink, the hot air balloons, the giant zoetrope that played moving pictures—but sooner or later his attention was drawn to the thing in her hair and he felt flat like a pancake just thinking about it. 

But the absolute worst was when they were in her apartment together, alone—or rather, trying to be alone.


	3. Chapter 3

He had missed everything about Christine while he had been away on his very important expedition, and her lips were no exception. Christine also seemed to have missed him and his lips as well. 

It was in the middle of kissing her as they both sat on her couch that Raoul began to feel as though someone were watching. But that was a ridiculous concept—there was no one around. 

No one but Erik. 

Raoul leaned to the side, moving Christine with him, kissing her pretty face and mouth, when suddenly he caught sight of something. Two somethings. Two yellow glowing somethings—a pair of tiny but bright eyes. 

Raoul stopped kissing her. Erik was sitting at the top of her bookshelf, watching them intently, making direct eye contact with Raoul now that he’d noticed Erik. Christine blinked at her fiancé, surprised at his sudden pulling away. 

“What’s wrong?” she asked. 

Raoul nodded towards Erik. 

She turned and looked, then smiled. 

“It’s just Erik,” she said with a slight smile. 

“He’s _watching_.”

“He’s an angel?”

“That doesn’t weird you out?”

Christine looked confused. 

“Should it?”

Erik leaned in closer, still silent, still watching. Raoul cleared his throat and removed his hands from Christine. 

“You know what we need—tea,” Christine said, and stood to go to the kitchen. Maybe that would calm the unusual worries Raoul was having. 

She hummed to herself as she poured water into the kettle, setting it on the stove. She reached into the drawer and pulled out her kitchen dragon, setting him on the stove and giving his tail a firm tug, which resulted in the little green reptile spewing fire from his snout and heating the kettle. She cracked a tea egg into three different teacups, then poured the hot water in each one. 

While she was preparing the treat, Raoul stood and paced a little in the living room. A slight movement of something on the mantelpiece over the fireplace caught his attention. As he drew closer to it, a smile formed on his face. 

It was a paper crane, a letter, one he had folded himself in a moment of panic that he still remembered so well. He had just received the crane from Christine telling him that her father had died, and she was all alone in the world. He’d written to her immediately, offering the use of his family’s modest wealth and connections in Paris. He sent it off, too afraid to write what he really wanted to write, until a sudden fit of boldness overtook him and he wrote a second letter. In his haste, he’d scrawled out a marriage proposal onto a sheet of paper, and then, with badly shaking hands, he’d folded it as best he could. But he hadn’t folded it very well—the wings were lopsided, so when he’d tossed the crane in the air for it to find Christine—something that should have taken only a week or two, even from the boat well on its way to the so-called “North Pole”—it had ended up sputtering along, taking nearly five months to reach her, five long, lovesick, nervous months before he had an answer from her. 

But she’d said yes, and she had kept the letter. All this time, the little folded crane had been here on her mantle, fluttering its crooked wings and nodding its head every so often. He smiled tenderly at it. Then he noticed the teeth marks on it. He frowned. Sharp little marks, definitely teeth, and just the size of— 

He turned to frown at Erik. Erik hissed at him from across the room. 

Christine entered the room at that moment, teacups on a tray. She set them on the short table in front of the couch and sat down again. Raoul reluctantly joined her, suppressing a shudder as Erik clambered down from the bookshelf and scampered across the floor on all fours before jumping up on the short table. Erik leaned over his cup of tea, sticking his face inside, lapping it up with his tongue. He stared at Raoul, and Raoul held unwilling eye contact as he did so. 

“He hissed at me,” Raoul stated. 

Erik paused his gross drinking to look at Christine mournfully, his eyes holding all the sorrow in the world. She frowned. 

“That’s funny,” she said. “I’ve never heard him hiss before. I didn’t know angels could do that.”

Erik looked smugly at Raoul and continued drinking. 

After their tea was finished, Christine walked Raoul to the door, and to his disappointment, Erik followed as well. 

“It’s been so lovely to have you over, Raoul,” she said, her voice low and sweet. 

“Six months,” he promised, brushing a stray curl from her face. “Six more months and you will be the most beautiful bride that ever was.”

“Goodbye, Raoul,” she said as she squeezed his arm. 

“Goodbye, Christine,” he said, and turned to leave, but Christine stopped him. 

“Raoul,” she whispered, leaning in close. “Can you say goodbye to Erik?”

Raoul looked down at Erik, who was standing right by Christine, his hands with his sharp claws holding onto the fabric of her skirt, and he staring up at Raoul with a blank look on his face. 

“I think it’s only polite,” she added. 

“Goodbye, Erik,” he said stiffly. 

Erik stared, yellow eyes vacant, and made no sign that he heard him. 

Raoul looked at Christine, confused, but she smiled at him. 

“It’s good to see you two getting along!” she chirped. “I think you got off on the wrong foot, but you know, there’s still time to become friends before the wedding! And after that, we’ll all live together in a nice house! A happy family!”

“A what?” Raoul asked. 

Erik continued to stare, and Raoul didn’t think he was even blinking. 

Christine’s smile faded a little. 

“Well of course Erik is going to live with us,” she told him. “He is my maestro, my angel! I love him.”

Raoul looked down at the little beast on the floor and wondered what, exactly, Christine saw in him. He scratched his head. 

“Gee, I guess...”

“I knew you’d understand, Raoul. That’s just one of the many things I love about you.”

She kissed him on the cheek, and before she closed the door he could see that Erik was still staring but now his eyes were narrowed and his mouth scowling. 

Raoul played Christine’s words over and over on his head the next few days. Erik, with them, forever. How could he stand that? Fleeting thoughts occurred to him—he could take Erik and put him in a box and dump in the woods, or even in the river. He could tell Christine that he had simply disappeared one day. But he felt guilty thinking about lying to her. 

Still, he was unsettled. Christine seemed to think he could talk, but the only sounds Raoul had ever heard him make were hisses and sighs and growls. Christine was not one to lie, but sometimes Raoul couldn’t figure it out. 

One time, when he was over at Christine’s and she was in the living room with Erik, Raoul had gone to the kitchen to get something, and while he was there he faintly heard what sounded like a man’s voice talking to Christine, and her replying. But when Raoul entered the room again, the only other person had been Erik, and he glared at Raoul with that same feral glint in his eyes, like he was sizing up the vicomte and trying to decide if he could eat him before Christine could notice. Surely this wasn’t what was talking to Christine so normally a moment ago? But if not, who? 

Raoul tried to acclimate himself to the thought of Erik. At Christine’s urging, he greeted the tiny creature when he arrived, and bid him farewell when he left, though Erik hardly seemed to notice or even care. 

Of all the things Raoul had seen in his many travels, Erik was what unsettled him the most. Not the ghost ship they’d passed on the ocean, not the sea serpents that had almost capsized their own ship, not the cloud pirates, not even the alien filled dome they’d discovered in place of the “North Pole” that they’d all been sworn to secrecy about. Something about Erik just got under his skin. 

The next time he visited his fiancée, the horrible little Erik was sitting cross legged on the short table, munching on a large, crunchy, cracker. At the end of the table was a dishrag wrapped around something. Raoul leaned in close to see what it was, and Erik’s watchful eyes followed him. 

It was an egg. A fairly normal sized egg, but the shell was black. He frowned at it, not understanding where it came from or why it was here. 

Christine breezed into the room, book in hand to read with Raoul. 

“Christine, what’s this?” 

He pointed to the egg and she smiled at it. 

“That’s Erik’s,” she told him. 

“What do you mean?”

“That’s Erik’s egg,” she said as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. 

“Like... He laid it?”

“Yes!”

Raoul recoiled from it. 

“What—“

“It’s okay,” she said, sitting next to him on the couch. “They almost never hatch.”

His brain was reeling. 

“He’s done this before?” he asked in a horrified whisper, then when he realized, he demanded— “Almost never? What came out of the one that hatched?”

A silence fell over all three of them. Christine’s smile disappeared, and Erik stopped his munching to look at her with wide, worried eyes, as though a secret were about to get out. 

“That is between me and Erik,” she said quietly, seriously, not meeting Raoul’s eye. 

The moment passed, and Christine turned to Raoul, cheery once more. She held up the book she’d brought with her. 

“Are you ready to read?” she asked him. 

They settled themselves on the couch, cuddled up together as Christine began to read aloud, but Raoul found his eyes straying back to Erik, and his mind following. 

It felt utterly bizarre to think of Erik as a parent to something that was out there somewhere, and even worse to think that perhaps Christine had some part in it, tending to it, perhaps. Would this egg hatch too? 

Erik continued to eat his cracker, sharp teeth biting into it and turning the cracker this way and that to bite off the edges. Crumbs were falling out of his mouth at a terrible pace, making a mess of his suit and the table alike. He never closed his mouth at all while eating. 

The fact that omelettes were served when Christine invited him to breakfast a few days later was the final straw for Raoul. 

He could stand him no more. He had to get rid of Erik. 

He consulted a specialty shop in the city, a knowledgeable old man assisting him. Ancient tomes were consulted, and then the most recently updated tomes were checked. Raoul couldn’t fully identify what Erik was, exactly, but he was a pest, that much was certain. He was no angel. He had magic in him, and he was up to no good, of that second point Raoul was certain. With the shopkeeper’s help, Raoul procured some herbs that the man insisted would repel the being in question. 

“He’ll hate these,” the man said as he put some dried leaves and twigs into a paper bag. “A few whiffs of this and he’ll be off your property in no time. You were right to come here, these kinds of infestations can get nasty.”

Raoul thanked him and paid for the rare herbs. He took the paper bag back to Christine’s apartment, and, using his spare key, quietly entered. 

Christine was out at a rehearsal, he knew this. She wouldn’t be home for hours yet. He felt slightly guilty, but he was doing this to protect her! He was doing the right thing. 

He went into her bedroom and saw the wig she normally wore while going out was still on her vanity. It the middle of it was the hole where Erik lived, currently empty. 

Raoul marched up to the wig and pulled the herbs out of the bag, sneakily stuffing them deep into the false hair with trembling fingers. Once they were entirely hidden and surrounding Erik’s nest, he crumpled the bag and put it in his pocket. 

Erik would leave after this. It would be better that way. Just him and Christine. She would be sad, probably, but she would be better off. She would get used to Erik being gone! And Raoul would certainly feel better. 

He frowned at the wig one last time, oddly guilt ridden. 

How dare a wig make him feel things!

“Humbug,” he muttered under his breath, then repeated it as he turned to leave her room. “Humbug, humbug.”

He stalked to the front door, but before he reached it, he suddenly heard a voice, in perfect imitation of his own voice— “ _Humbug, humbug, humbug!_ ”

Raoul darted for the front door, terrified of the apparent specter, and dashed out into the street, running as fast as he could, leaving a very peeved Erik in his wake.


End file.
